Death Duties by
Phil Lovesey
hbk out Mar 98
Published by HarperCollins
at £15.99
Telling a child she shouldn't be sad because her dead daddy has gone to
heaven turns into a serious mistake when the child in question grows up to
believe her mission in life is to release people from their misery to join
their maker.
That's the starting point for Phil Lovesey's first novel. It's bad enough
that there's a killer out there who thinks she's on an errand of mercy. But
when police arrest the wrong person for one of her heartless crimes, a
whole new tide of bloodshed is unleashed. The only people who can stop the
carnage were once police colleagues back in the 1960s. The problem is that
they've since gone their separate ways. Only by coming together and
reuiniting the pieces of the jigsaw each possesses is there any hope of
catching a cold-blooded psychopath.
This chilling and deviously plotted debut is an idiosyncratic marriage
between the traditional English police procedural and the psychological
thriller. Laced with black humour and packed with credible if not always
likeable characters, Death Duties signals the arrival of a quirky new
writer whose undoubted talent deserves attention.
(
Val McDermid
- 1995 Gold Dagger winner and creator of the highly acclaimed Kate Brannigan, Lindsay Gordon and Tony Hill series. Val's reviews originally appear in the Manchester Evening News)
Death Duties by
Phil Lovesey